Hi,
I’m completely new to self-hosting, so I’m trying to get better educated on it. I have come across other OSs (PaaSs?) that seem similar to StartOS (from my very limited perspective), in that they are preconfigured “plug-n-play” solutions to get you up and running quickly with self-hosting and come with “app stores”. Below are just a few of the ones I’ve stumbled upon. Just trying to understand how they differ.
Thanks!
Hi @mc-lemons,
Thank you for commenting about this topic! I’ll start off by pointing out our Umbrel Comparison documentation article. On that page you will find a comparison of many different Start9 and Umbrel qualities, such as Appearance, Architecture, Backups, Encryption, and Services.
Beyond that, while we haven’t published official documentation for the other services that you listed (CasaOS, HomelabOS, UBOS, and Yunohost), we are pretty familiar with all of these solutions and would be happy to shed light on any particular qualities (such as license, base OS, supported architecture, pricing, etc.) that are of greatest interest based on what you would like to accomplish.
Finally, I would add in contrast to these technologies, we see ourselves as the only ones who started with the goal of building a general purpose OS for hosting server-side software.
Hope this helps and let us know what you think!
I just want to add on to Jeremy’s excellent response. These are all great tools, and several of them offer features that are not yet available on StartOS. The biggest difference that I like to highlight is the foundation that we’re building, which will not only allow the missing feature-set in the near future, but also allow us to empower users with the highest degree of sovereignty over their data possible, in an accessible way. It has been possible for decades to stitch together a sovereign server/network, but we strive to make it available to anyone that desires it, regardless of skill-level. There are always trade-offs, but we strive to make all the options available, alongside education, guides, and high-availability support.
I think we definitely need to build a nice comparison chart that explains the entire ecosystem - so this is some extra motivation to accomplish that. Thank you for your post.
Thanks guys, I really appreciate the responses! A comparison chart would be great. I discovered you guys in my search to run my own Bitcoin node. I also came across the idea of “de-Googling” about a year or so ago, but it seemed fairly impractical as I had no idea about the self-hosting options. And with all the exposure to Big Tech’s overreach in recent years, privacy has become increasingly important to me. So when I came across Start9, with self-sovereignty and Bitcoin all under one roof, it felt like the perfect solution for me. That being said, committing your digital life to an ecosystem is not something to be taken lightly. Sort of like how once most people go Apple, and spread their digital life across the whole Apple ecosystem, they are most likely to never change. Android is similar (what I currently use), but not as fully integrated as Apple. So I guess some of the questions I’m trying to answer are:
Cheers everyone!
I appreciate your enthusiasm, welcome to the movement! To your questions: